Hours over rutted roads inland from Havana, the small Cuban city of Jatibonico is a snapshot of late 19th-century living, its streets crowded with horse-drawn carriages and lacking power much of the day and night.
The town’s decrepit sugar mill - once the country's largest - sits idle, lacking the parts, electricity, and fuel it needs to operate.
Two years ago a Russian company, Progress Agro, announced it would import machinery, fertiliser, and know-how to revitalise the mill, which once employed 2,000 people.
"When are the (Russians) coming? That's all anybody talks about," said Carlos Tirado Pino, 58, a mill maintenance worker among the few to retain his post.
Meanwhile, just outside town and out of sight, three bulldozers clear an abandoned cane field to prepare for the installation of a Chinese-financed solar park that will deliver 21 MW of electricity - one of 55 similarly sized such solar parks underwritten by China across Cuba this year.
Communist Cuba is a disaster. Shortages of food, fuel and medicine, grueling hours-long blackouts and plunging tourism and exports - combined with renewed US sanctions under the second Trump administration - have devastated its economy.
A Reuters review of various sites on the ground suggests that where many of Russia's most recent promises have fizzled, China has discreetly stepped up to fill the void, pushing ahead with a number of critically-timed projects aimed at helping Cuba salvage its economy.
Cuba joined China's Belt and Road Initiative in 2018, and China has since invested in several strategic infrastructure projects on the island, including major projects in transportation, port infrastructure and telecoms, while Russia, mired in a war in Ukraine and leery of lending more money to crisis-racked Cuba, has faded as a historic partner.
"Russia's promises have always been bigger than its performance," said William LeoGrande, a professor of Latin American politics at American University. "If China is now stepping up its assistance in light of Cuba's desperate conditions, that could prove to be a real lifeline."
Neither the Russian nor Chinese embassies in Havana responded to a request for comment.
The port of Mariel - Cuba's main shipping center just west of Havana - saw traffic from China begin to tick up in August of 2024, according to shipping data and two foreign businessmen who declined to give their names for this story.
Ships arriving last year from Shanghai, Tianjin and other prominent Chinese ports carried solar panels, steel, tools and parts. The "kits" came complete with fuel for overland transport to assure the panels would make it to their destinations, the sources said.
The arrival of Chinese ships is being felt across the Cuban countryside, as tractor trailers with Chinese markings rumble across pot-holed roads to reach far-flung destinations like Jatibonico.
Truck driver Noel Gonzalez, who on a recent morning delivered a load of gravel fill to the solar park site on the city's outskirts, said he was both amazed and grateful for the Chinese diligence.
"The Chinese (workers) come and periodically check every liter of petroleum, every route we take," Gonzalez said.
Fulton Armstrong, a former US National Intelligence Officer for Latin America, called China’s investments a "big benefit" but warned they won’t be enough to overcome the Trump administration’s renewed sanctions on the island.
“Havana can’t bank on either Russia or China coming in with magic pills," he said. "Only massive amounts of Chinese trade and assistance could pull the island through – and that just doesn’t seem plausible."
China's strategic investments in Cuba coincide with US accusations that China is installing “spy bases” on the nearby Caribbean Island, though Cuba and China have denied the allegations.
Two years ago, as Cuba's economy was still reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic and US sanctions, Russia too was ready to lend a hand.
In May 2023, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko arrived in Cuba for a ribbon-cutting ceremony that marked the reopening of the island's largest steel mill, a project made possible thanks to $100 million in Russian financing, Cuban state-run media reported.
Chernyshenko called the mill's reopening a, "fine example of Russian-Cuban cooperation."
The mill's plant director, Reinier Guillén, promised output of steel bars from the facility would soar to 62,000 tonnes in 2024. But Russia's investment did not translate into production.
Cuba's statistics agency ONEI reported in April that the island had churned out just 4,200 tonnes of steel bars in 2024.
Reuters was unable to make contact with CGC Investments, the Russian firm that had inked many of the 2023 deals.
Neither the Russian embassy nor its foreign ministry responded to a request for comment.
To be sure, some of Russia's promised aid has come through. Russian state-backed companies have supplied cargos by sea of both wheat and oil to the island. And Russia, like China, has promoted tourism to the island, offering a bump in foreign visitors and much-needed foreign exchange.
In May, two years after the 2023 flurry of announcements, Russia's Chernyshenko announced a plan to subsidise interest rates for businesses interested in investing as much as $1 billion on the island, calling Cuba a "reliable partner."
"There's still a lot of hard work to be done, we'll advance little by little,” Chernyshenko told reporters in Moscow, adding that "it is impossible to achieve things immediately, as if by magic.”
(Reporting by Dave Sherwood, additional reporting by Mario Fuentes, Marc Frank and Norlys Perez; Editing by Christian Plumb and Michael Learmonth.)